


Second Life

by 221b_hound



Series: Captains of Industry [26]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Australia, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Artist John, Barista John, Couch Sex, Frottage, Hard Rubbish Day, Hipsters, M/M, Melbourne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 12:34:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7315420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock participate in the Great Australian Tradition of claiming stuff on Hard Rubbish Day. Whether they realise it or not, they are both geniuses at reclaiming abandoned things, finding love and joy and purpose in things others had given up on. Each other, most of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AtlinMerrick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/gifts).



> The latter half of this was written as a quick cheer-me-up for Atlin, one day. She was in need of cheering. I, while out and about, sent her sex-against-the-fridge smut one line at a time via Skype. 
> 
> Taking salvageable items from large waste left on the roadside for what Australians call Hard Rubbish Day is, I assume, not exclusive to Australia. But it is absolutely a thing we do. I have two chests of drawers salvaged in this exact manner. This [ PDF is a study on the practice of 'gleaning' and how it relates to environmentalism and ethical consumption](http://apo.org.au/files/Resource/smc_culturaleconomiesofhardrubbish_mar_2014.pdf) might be of interest.

Hard Rubbish Day is something of an Australian institution. The average home has at least one item in it that was scored on Hard Rubbish Day: the day that the local council announces it’ll collect all the oversized chunks of rubbish to cart them away. The kerbs get filled up with broken coffee tables, skanky mattresses, tower of crappy chairs with bent legs or in desperate need of restuffing, massive old cathode ray tube television sets, computer monitors from the 90s, tattered suitcases filled with smaller, slightly less tattered bags, and bicycles missing one wheel.

Mycroft was appalled the day Greg came proudly home with an ugly, green-painted three-drawer cupboard with a broken support, so that the top drawer sagged. Greg, who’s good with his hands (and Mycroft can proudly attest to all the ways in which that is true) replaced the broken support, sanded back the whole thing to rediscover the pine under the ugly green, then varnished it. The set of drawers is now on Mycroft’s side of the bed.

Molly once found a perfectly serviceable cane basket with a hole in the side. A wash, a bit of what she called ‘cane knitting’ to repair the gap, and it’s now in the corner of her barber shop, where she throws used face towels for laundering.  Sally dragged home a sofa with the springs showing and managed to restuff and reupholster it sufficiently for her soundproofed garage, where her band Freak practices.

Sherlock and John join the ranks of Traditional Aussie Suburbia when they leave their flat and discover Hard Rubbish Day in full bloom in their laneway. Rankins Lane is festooned with detritus – a collection for their lane only, since the Melbourne City Council doesn’t do full-on, citywide hard rubbish collections all on one day.

And there in the drifts of broken furniture is a fold-out bed. A spring is bent and useless, and the mattress has a tear in the fabric, but both are easily repairable. A bit of a steam clean for the mattress too; it’d be good as new. John eyes it speculatively.

“You wouldn’t,” says Sherlock, aghast.

“The sofa in my studio’s a bit narrow,” is all John says with his voice. His face tells other stories, about one or the other slipping off the damn thing either during what should be great sex or afterglow snuggling. Mostly that makes them laugh a lot and get inventive with angles, but fewer bare-arsed falls interrupting the good times would be a welcome thing.

Together they wrangle the fold-out sofa back up to their flat, then dash out, running a little late for work.

Sherlock, programming clients done by 10am, and with no more interesting clients presenting themselves, leaves John to make coffee. He spends the rest of the day fixing the bed. He finds a spare spring and the tools to fix the frame. He cleans the mattress and hand-stitches the tear with neat little stitches that render the mend almost invisible. He visits John’s studio – John has given him a key.

Some days when it’s stupidly busy at Captains of Industry but not for Sherlock, he goes there to steep himself in a room that is John personified, with its scents of wax and polish, the sense of order and creativity, where nightmares are repurposed into art, and now other things too. Happier parts of John’s heart and mind are transformed into photography, images blended and reinterpreted, which speak of feelings he can’t always put into words.

There’s a new piece on the wall today. A portrait of Sherlock, infused with images from the National Gallery of Victoria: the water wall and the colours of the Leonard French mosaic ceiling. _Light and Motion_ , John has called it. Sherlock loves how John sees him, how he makes Sherlock look in his art. He used to think he was too strange and awkward to ever fit properly in the world. He knew he was singular, but didn’t think it was in a way that anyone would ever like, ever _appreciate_. Now he feels that, in John’s eyes at least, instead of being an aberration, a misfit, eccentric at best, but more like an abnormality, a… a freak – instead of that, Sherlock is rare and exceptional, unique and distinctive, like a work of art.

John is no less a matchless piece (except that it seems they were made to be a set after all, different but complementary). John is as rare, as exceptional, and if he was broken once, well, rare and beautiful mosaics are made from things that were broken and then transformed into beauty. And John is a mosaic; he is a montage and a medley of wonderful things, made whole with their juxtaposition, and holistically glorious.

Sherlock thinks all of these things, while working out where the old sofa should go, and how the repaired sofa bed will fit in.

Sherlock doesn’t move anything yet. Part of him wants to prepare and rearrange everything so it’s perfect next time John sees it. But this space is John, and Sherlock won’t meddle without permission.

The next night, however (now that the mattress is fully dry) John loves Sherlock’s suggestions and they move a few cupboards, a shelf or two. They put the old sofa on its end in one corner, out of the way, and they drag the new sofa bed through the streets and into the goods lift at the end of the hall.

They set it up in its rightful place, and throw cushions on it, and a few blankets. They fold it down and lie on it, side by side, to test its strength and comfort. They’re tired from a day of work, and aching from the physical effort of shifting furniture, and that does not matter one hot damn as, giggling, they kiss and strip and frot to ‘test the suspension’.

John straddles Sherlock, tweaks Sherlock’s nipples while he rolls his hips, sliding their cocks together with delicious drag.

“Look at you,” John breathes, angling his hips for better friction, “Just fucking look at you. Gorgeous.”

Sherlock’s hands are gripping onto John’s thighs as he pushes up into the press of John’s thighs and balls and cock on him. He arches into John’s pinching grip on his nipples. His eyes are open and devouring, lapping up every trickle of sweat, every expression, the way John’s moustache moves to frame John’s mouth as he speaks, as he moans, as his lips form ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ and as John bites his own lip.

“Come on me,” Sherlock urges, his gaze raking down to see how John’s slit leaks, pearly, down John’s cockhead and onto Sherlock’s, onto Sherlock’s belly, a sticky cascade that smears along shafts and pools in Sherlock’s navel. “Fuck. John. John. Yes. Fucking yes, rub your big cock on me and come all over me. Come all over my dick. Come all over me.” Then Sherlock’s eyes glint with wicked humour. “Paint me like your French girls.”

John, so close, laughs, his rhythm stuttering, then he sprawls along Sherlock’s body, kisses him, wet and sloppy, filthy-wanton, breathless, and he presses their groins close together (close and slick and hot) and rolls and thrusts his hips.

“You’re going to come all over my dick, too,” John promises him in a low, gruff voice. He adjusts his angle and his hips pump and his legs spread wider and their cocks slide together. They slip out of alignment, so John slips his hand between them to help keep them together. He thrusts harder.

“God I can feel your balls,” he mutters, adjusting again so he can feel Sherlock’s tightening bollocks against his arse, then shifts once more to rub their shafts together. “Want me to paint you? Paint all over you?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” moans Sherlock, clutching at the blanket, his heels digging into the mattress, and arching into everywhere John’s touching him. His gaze his hooded, delirious with lust, and the wet, slick sound of John wanking the two of them is lost under John’s grunting shout as he comes in spurts all over them both. Sherlock, watching John’s semen painting hands and belly and the crowns of their cocks, groans and comes too.

They sag together, blissful and sticky and exhausted, and then John grabs some tissues for a quick clean and they doze together, under a blanket, beyond delighted with the official christening of their new item of furniture.

A few hours later, Sherlock stirs awake. Faint light is filtering through the closed blinds. The cathedral clock chimes. A tram dings its warning bell as it passes by on Flinders Street below. He’s alone in the bed, but he can hear John on the other side of the studio. Sherlock opens his eyes as John opens the refrigerator there, spilling yellow light into the darkness.

John, naked, is crouched on the balls of his feet, getting a drink from the little bar fridge.

From where he reclines on the new bed behind him, Sherlock is heavy breathing at the sight of that delicious arse and at John’s bollocks and cock visible between his thighs.

John hears. He wriggles his bum a bit. “Want something?” he asks. He means cider or beer or mineral water, theoretically. But Sherlock is suddenly a warm presence at his back, kissing the back of John’s neck. Further down his spine. He lays his cheek between John’s shoulder blades and smooths his hands over John’s arse.

John teeters a bit nearly losing his balance but those hands squeeze his backside and steady him.

“Oh,” says John softly, “That’s what you want, is it?” He wriggles his bum again. “Nice. I like that.” The door of the bar fridge swings shut. It’s dark now, but for the stripes of street light through the blinds, layered over their bare bodies.

Sherlock reaches between John’s legs to fondle his balls and John has to hold onto the sides the fridge for better stability. “Good,” he says, voice infused with warmth and good humour. He loves touching John all over, especially here in the space that is the place of utmost Johnness. He loves that he’s allowed. That he’s encouraged. He loves having his hands full of this rare, beautiful, extraordinary, beloved man.

Sherlock stretches his fingers forward to caress the base of John’s thickening cock. John hums and moves his hips to encourage Sherlock’s hands to move.

And they do. They caress John’s backside and bollocks. The skin of his inner thighs. His cock. His fingers slip over John's wet slit; move back.

“Perfect,” murmurs Sherlock. He is pressed close to John’s back, his cock hard and now snug between the cheeks of John's arse as he fondles, caresses, strokes.

What Sherlock doesn’t know, what he surmises though, is that John loves how Sherlock touches him here in this room, too; this place that was private, unshared, a sanctuary where John knitted together broken parts of himself and made art of his pain. Now Sherlock is an inspiration, art made of joy, and John cannot get enough of having Sherlock – his joy and inspiration – here in this external manifestation of his inmost heart. John and Sherlock both love their new apartment, but their communion here in the studio is a different kind of paradise.

John, using his hands on the fridge for stability, thrusts back against Sherlock’s cock – sticky and slippery between his arsecheeks – and forward into the curl of Sherlock’s fingers.

John’s calves start to ache and, sensing this (how could he not, plastered along John's back) Sherlock shifts to his knees and John straddles his thighs.

And then Sherlock is thrusting, frotting his cock over John’s cleft, against his hole, and licking then sucking then kissing john’s neck and spine. John is rolling his hips, against the hot silky hardness of Sherlock’s glans over his sensitive pucker and into the circle of Sherlock’s fist.

Then they are coming again: Sherlock in the crease of John’s arse, John all over Sherlock’s fingers and the base of the little fridge.

They collapse, giggling, joyful, on the floor, spooned.

"Fuck, I love you," says John.

Sherlock burrows his nose into the hair at the nape of John's neck.

"Mmmmm," he says, "love you too."

When the Nicholas Building collective next arranges a Hard Rubbish collection for the tenants, the old narrow sofa goes into the alley. It disappears within the hour.

John hopes the new owners remember to steam clean it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing around with some new art using [ Johnlock soundscapes](http://221b-hound.tumblr.com/post/146290948840/here-is-the-full-set-of-sherlock-soundscapes-on).
> 
> I have now created the _Light and Motion_ portrait mentioned above - [see it here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8041261).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [PODFIC 'Second Life' written and read by 221b_hound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10066232) by [221b_hound](https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound), [missmuffin221](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmuffin221/pseuds/missmuffin221)




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